Archive for the ‘Primo’ Category

After last week’s surprise ending with John Laurinaitis getting his own hands dirty by attacking an injured John Cena with the help of Lord Tensai and Sakamoto, a lot of buzz was created about just what the encore would be this week on Raw. Couple that with the anticipated fallout from Brock Lesnar’s attack on the Chief Operating Officer Triple H and Monday Night Raw this week was assured to reveal much about the near future of the WWE. However, John Cena was not in the arena and appeared via satellite. Neither Tripe H or Lesnar would make an appearance either, but Lesnar did send his “legal representation” in the form of Paul Heyman, which was a very pleasant surprise, but we’ll get to that later.

We started the night with John Laurinaitis explaining his actions, describing how upset he was when John Cena made fun of his voice and otherwise insulted him. The Vice President of Talent Relations and General Manager of both Raw and Smackdown then proceeded to put the rest of the locker room on notice that anybody insulting or making fun of him would receive similar treatment to what Cena got the week before. So, of course, WWE Champion CM Punk immediately comes out to the ring and starts insulting Laurinaitis, prompting the General Manager to place him in a match against Lord Tensai for later in the night.

In the first match of the night, Big Show would get a rematch for the Intercontinental Championship after Rhodes was able to recapture the title under dubious circumstances in their Table Match at Extreme Rules on April 29. Shortly into the match, Rhodes would decide discretion is the better part of valor as he bailed out of the ring and grabbed his title and headed to the back. Big Show was able to block his exit once, but after he threw him back into the ring, Cody ran right back out the other side and made good on his escape, purposefully getting himself counted out. Eve Torres would then come out and chastise Big Show after Big Show had a brief altercation with John Laurinaitis before the match and made fun of his voice. Eve then forced Big Show to apologize and reminded him that outside of the professional wrestling business, there isn’t much use for a 40-year old giant and she called him a freak. This segment went a long way toward establishing Eve’s authority in her position as Laurinaitis’ Executive Assistant, publicly humbling Big Show in the process.

After winning the WWE Tag Team Championships last week along with R-Truth, Kofi Kingston would take on Dolph Ziggler. And after these two men spend the previous two summers fighting with each over the Intercontinental and United States Championships, one could easily expect these two to put on a very entertaining contest. And although it was too short, the match was well done, ending with Ziggler getting some outside help from Vickie Guerrero and Jack Swagger to pick up the victory, taking a huge step back in the right direction after spending previous weeks giving lackluster performances while being matched up against Brodus Clay.

Throughout the match, we were shown clips of A.W. (formerly Abraham Washington) back stage with his new clients Primo, Epico and Rosa and they were also joined by Mason Ryan, hinting at a possible relationship between A.W. and the big Welshman in the future. A.W. appears to be making a move toward being a big-name manager like Vickie. In an era where ringside managers are now few and far between, Vickie has enjoyed a good amount of success, which seems to have opened the doors for somebody like A.W. to give it a shot, but in this era, far removed from the time when legends like Bobby Heenan, Mr. Fuji and Jimmy Hart accompanied their men to the ring, we’ll have to wait and see just how much of a chance he really gets.

John Cena appeared via satellite for an interview with Michael Cole and Cena made it abundantly clear that even against doctor’s advice to not compete for the next couple of months, he would be at Over the Limit to kick John Laurinaitis’ ass. Surely, Laurinaitis at least thinks he has some aces hidden up his sleeve because going into a match, even against a one-armed John Cena, it’s clear that Laurinaitis wouldn’t have a chance. Expect heavy outside interference from Tensai or a last second change of rules for the match to put things in the General Manager’s favor. My guess would be that this ends up being some kind of Handicap Match with Laurinaitis teamming with Tensai and probably still falling short against Cena, who almost certainly will be overcoming the odds once again. Cena is currently 2-0 at Over the Limit with victories over Batista and The Miz in “I Quit” Matches for the WWE Championship.

The new Diva’s Champion Layla teammed with Kelly Kelly to take on Natalya and Maxine and it was a foregone conclusion that Layla and Kelly would be winning this one in short order. And sure enough, Layla finished Maxine off with her Neckbreaker, which she calls the Lay Out, in only a matter of minutes with Kelly’s only purpose in this tag match being to knock Natalya off the apron and thus prevent her from stopping Layla from finishing off Maxine. It was announced earlier today on wwe.com that Layla will defend the Diva’s Championship against Beth Phoenix at Over the Limit on May 20.

We started off the second hour with a tag team contest, featuring Chris Jericho teaming with Alberto Del Rio to take on Randy Orton and the World Heavyweight Champion Sheamus. Sheamus and Orton beat on their opponents for much of the match until Jericho and Del Rio would take advantage of Sheamus’ weakened shoulder, which was injured by multiple attacks from Daniel Bryan and Alberto Del Rio on Smackdown last week. The momentum would swing back and forth several more times before Del Rio would taste the RKO. Sheamus then inadvertently hit his own partner Orton with the Brogue Kick and Jericho beat Sheamus with the Codebreaker. This was easily the biggest win Jericho has had in quite some time, pinning the World Heavyweight Champion in a tough tag team match. In the aftermath, Sheamus helped Orton back up only to feel the Viper’s wrath as he was hit with the RKO. This match shows how much the title picture on both Raw and Smackdown is fluctuating. There has been no mention of a Draft to shake up the rosters as of yet, so it appears that superstars are going to just be able to jump back and forth to challenge champions from either shows at any given moment. Daniel Bryan is already representing Smackdown to challenge CM Punk for the WWE Championship at Over the Limit and now the World Heavyweight Title match at Over the Limit has been changed to a Fatal 4-Way with Sheamus defending against Randy Orton and Chris Jericho in addition to Alberto Del Rio. This tag teammatch was also easily the best of the night, but when you’re given over 20 minutes to work with while others are fortunate if they have 5 minutes of air time for their matches, it’s easy to have the best match of the night.

The Miz continued his downward slide as he was matched-up with Brodus Clay. It wasn’t all bad for Miz as he delivered a decent promo on his way to the ring, telling Clay that if he wanted to see King Hippo dance, he’d play Mike Tyson’s Punchout. Miz even looked very impressive in the early going. beating down the Funkasaurus numerous times and staying on the attack, but it wouldn’t last as Clay was able to finally overpower Miz and drive him into the mat and then follow up with his Running Headbutt. Miz then got caught coming off the ropes with a T-Bone Suplex and Brodus finished Miz with his Big Splash for the victory.

Paul Heyman delivered a statement from Brock Lesnar, stating that he did not regret any of his actions, that he did exactly what he promised he would do by kicking ass and hurting people and he felt betrayed by the WWE Universe and as a result of the broken agreement he made with the company on the final Raw before Extreme Rules. He claimed that Triple H was always jealous of him and that while Triple H was able to last nearly an hour in a Cell with the Undertaker, he could not last one minute in a fight with Lesnar. The statement culminated with the revelation that Brock Lesnar had quit.

On his way to the ring for the final match of the night, CM Punk found out that his match with Lord Tensai would be changed to a Handicap Match and his opponents would be Lord Tensai as well as his challenger for the WWE Championship at Over the Limit, Daniel Bryan. Punk would make a valiant effort throughout the match, but Tensai and Bryan pulled many pages out of the 2-on-1 advantage playbook and Tensai was eventually able to blind punk with the Green Mist Claw Slam combination and pin him for the victory. After the match, Bryan applied the Yes Lock on Punk, getting his own jabs in and adding fuel to the fire for their title match at Over the Limit. Tensai continues to be put over as he has now gained victories over both John Cena and CM Punk, albeit with help in both instances. However, this certainly is not going to be enough to put a stop to Punk’s rebellious antics. We are supposed to take away from this that making John Laurinaitis angry is a bad idea, but Laurinaitis continues to be a joke. His delivery is horrible, he frequently mixes up his words and the only reason anybody cares to boo him is because they know he’s bad at his job. There is a definite difference between getting booed because you are good at your job and getting booed because you are bad at your job and after all these years, that’s a distinction that WWE still needs to learn.